Will the West’s Paranoia of Russia Destroy the World?
April 6, 2025
Paul Craig Roberts
Do you remember the James Bond film in which a deranged Soviet General wanted to launch a nuclear war, or Dr. Strangelove, an American deranged general who wanted to do the same? Well, Dr. Strangelove is still with us, but he is no longer considered insane.
In today’s Pentagon spreading nuclear weapons among allies who lack them in order to conduct an even larger nuclear war is just good war planning. On April 1, and unfortunately it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke, the nominee as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine, said that the United States was ready to consider entering into nuclear sharing agreements with more of the country’s NATO allies. “From a military perspective, expanding NATO allies’ participation in the nuclear deterrence mission in some capacity would enhance flexibility, survivability, and military capability. If confirmed, I will work… to evaluate the cost/benefit of such a decision.” https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/next-pentagon-chief-confirms-willingness-provide-more-allies-nuclear-attack
The nominee said that another benefit of providing nuclear weapons to NATO members who don’t have them is to prevent nuclear proliferation resulting from acquiring them on their own. If too many of our allies have the weapons, the US would not be able to manage the escalation risk.
What Caine said makes sense. We do not want Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, or Poland launching a nuclear war.
But what this common sense hides is the absurdity of “managing nuclear war.”
There is a consensus, or close to one, that nuclear war would be lethal to life on the planet. It calls to mind the novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz, with the spaceship loading with human, animal, and plant life for a distant planet in a short period of time remaining prior to nuclear armageddon on earth.
It is, of course, the Pentagon’s job to be prepared for war. But as the war the Pentagon is preparing for is unwinnable, why not attempt to prepare for peace? What cause is worth fighting for it if results in the death of planet Earth?
These thoughts entered the mind of President John F. Kennedy. JFK had campaigned as a Cold Warrior proclaiming a “missile gap.” Somehow President Eisenhower, World War II hero and 5-star general had let the Soviets get ahead of us. Kennedy was rescued from his delusion by the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs. He refused the request to allow the US Air Force to support the CIA’s Cuban refugee army’s invasion of Cuba. He refused the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s “Northwoods Project” ( https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf ), which called for the US Air Force to shoot down US passenger airliners, staff boats of refugees from Cuba to Florida, and kill Americans on the streets of Miami and Washington, D.C., and blame Castro as justification for a US invasion of Cuba. He rejected the Joint Chiefs of Staff plan for nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. All of this information is publicly available, but few are aware of it.
Kennedy worked behind the scenes with Soviet leader Khrushchev to defuse the dangerous situation. Instead of recognizing Kennedy’s leadership, the US military/security complex saw Kennedy as “soft on communism,” a traitor-in-the-making to America who had to be removed from office. As Kennedy was popular, assassination was the solution.
I agree with James Douglas, Oliver Stone, and all the rest that Kennedy was murdered by the US Security State. Where I depart from them is over whether it should have been revealed or covered up. Here facts are not the issue, just judgment, and judgment is not infallible.
I do not believe that anyone on the Warren Commission believed the report. The entire purpose of the report was to protect the American public from losing confidence in their own government in the midst of a dangerous Cold War with a nuclear-armed opponent in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Bay of Pigs. With the balance of power in the world at stake, the United States would have been harmed by official admission that the security agencies of the US government had assassinated its own president.
I agree that today six decades after JFK’s assassination, the truth, long proven by independent investigators, could be officially recognized, and perhaps it will be.
What I will address instead is how the truth could have presented in 1963 if only the American government were up to the task.
Once sworn in, Lyndon Johnson could have said something along the following lines:
“Dear fellow Americans, Our inordinate paranoia, our fear, of the Soviet Union has resulted in our President’s death at the hands of the CIA, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secret Service, because President Kennedy’s efforts to reduce the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union that very recently brought the world close to nuclear war were misperceived by our protective agencies as a sign of dangerous and unwarranted trust in our enemy that left us exposed to nuclear attack. President Kennedy was seen as soft on Communism and possibly a traitor.
“The fault is not in the CIA and the Joint Chiefs. The fault is in the Cold War and the deployment of immensely destructive nuclear weapons. This threat is real, and it must be eliminated. Our most urgent task is not to prosecute our protective agencies for their misjudgment but to terminate the Cold War and ban the existence of nuclear weapons. Our challenge is to learn how to get along, not how to kill one another. The tragedy and our grief over our President’s assassination is the fruit of our own paranoia. Our job is to substitute mutual understaffing and trust for fear and mistrust. If not, sooner or later the disastrous weapons will be used.”
Nothing like this could happen, because too many people and interests had a stake in an ongoing conflict. The assassination of JFK put Johnson in the presidency. It benefitted the power and budget of the military/security complex by blaming the assassination on Oswald, a Soviet agent. For the Joint Chiefs and the CIA that was a wonderful outcome. What did they have to gain from Johnson telling the truth and continuing Kennedy’s efforts to reduce hysteria and threats? When vision was needed, it wasn’t there.
Most disasters in history result from people being incapable of making the right decisions. Today it is Trump and Putin who are being tested. How much confidence can we have in either?
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